Throw Back Thursday is a weekly event hosted by Jenny at Take Me Away. The purpose is to highlight a "throwback" or an older book that deserves some recognition.
Throwbacks can be:
- a book you've read and loved, or a book you've always wanted to read
- a book that brings back memories for you from as far back as your childhood, or just from last year
- a classic or a hidden gem
Anyone can participate. Just grab one of the banners from her post and post your throwback on Thursday. Don't forget to leave a comment on her Throwback Thursday post, so everyone can stop by your blog too!
This week my Throw Back Thursday is going to be, My Sweet Audrina and Flowers In The Attic from the Dollenganger series by V.C. Andrews.
I was fifteen years old when I first discovered the world of V.C. Andrews and I remember I found myself standing in the center of the library with a copy of My Sweet Audrina in one hand and Flowers In The Attic in the other, completely enthralled and looking as if I'd just uncovered hidden treasure. To say that I was enchanted, would be an understatement. To say that these books changed the way that I look at life, gave me a new perspective on controversial subject matter, dared me to step out of my comfort zone and redefine my whole way of thinking, and changed the way that I read books forever would be a true statement.
I don't know that she had a "specific formula" for writing her novels, but I do believe that she possessed the ability to write a story that was so daring and bold, that either caused the reader to fall in love with the character and their beautiful story as well as sympathize with the dreadful circumstances that they often found themselves in or made them hate it with a firey contemptuous passion. For me, I discovered a harrowing world filled with an amazing cast of multi-faceted, brave, spirted, passionate, and strong-willed character's that allowed me to feel with them, instead of just for them.
These were character's that each came with thier own set of circumstances and nightmares, that had to crawl, fight, and scratch their way out of the horrible confinements that they often found themselves in, in order to reach the top and breathe in the heady scene of happiness that they so richly deserved after edruing all of the pain, terror, and agony that they were more than likely faced with from an early age that carried on over into their adult years. They showed some serious unsurmountable strength, for which one can only admire. I don't know that I could ever be as strong to crawl from the rubble as they were, but it made me admire them even more.
It was so very easy for me to fall in love with Cathy and Chris, because they were victims of their own horrible circumstances, it's easy to see how they could fall in love only to struggle with society's scorn, who would scoff at them and call them disgusting, dirty, evil, wrong when they weren't there in that attic with them. They weren't there, when they were forced to become mother and father to Carrie and Corey at such a delicate age. They weren't there when Corinne was dusting the cookies with rat poisining and Corey got so sick, that he ended up dying. They weren't there, when Carrie became so withdrawn and shrunken, that she would end up carrying the haunting ghosts of that time spent in the attic with her for the rest of her life. They weren't there when they created paper flowers in the attic and hung them up, just to get a glimpse of what they should have been able to enjoy outside those walls. More importantly, they weren't there when Cathy and Chris had no one else to turn to, but one another for comfort and solace amidst the chaos of so much pain, so much agony inflicted by the grandfather, their mother, and the grandmother.
So, why does society get to judge them so cruely, when they don't know?
Oh, my sweet Audrina, how much do I love her? Perhaps, too much. Audrina, is a very special character to me, in many ways for reasons all her own. My Sweet Audrina is definitely amongst my top five favorite books, easily. And, it's the most unique, in the fact that it was the only stand-alone novel written by her at the time, without incest. She's such a unique and deep character, all on her own. She's very captivating in the story that she has to tell.
For Audrina, life was hauntingly different and harrowingly full of deciet, beytrayl, innocence and an unending supply of deeply suffocating parental love so dysfuntional that it practically leaps off the pages at you and makes you want to knock heads together and ask, why would you do that to a child of yours? Why would you make her feel as if she weren't good enough, put her in a rocking chair that you had convinced her belonged to her dead sister, the other and best Audrina, whom you'd named her after and force her to rock and sing and let herself become an empty pitcher so that the other, the best Audrina, would come and fill her and she would be happy and carefree once again when you knew it was all a horrible lie that you had concocted to protect her from the truth?
Stolen innocence, this is the truth of what happened to Audrina that day in the woods, a little girl that was coming home from school in a pretty little dress to a birthday party, was raped. What followed next, was the story of a little girl who was completely and almost utterly made over by her overbearing and suffocating partents, particularly her father. She was kept at home away from school, kept inside the house, her memory toyed with as if she were a mere puppet for their entertainment purposes. Audrina, was all but brainwashed into believing that something horrible and sinful had happened to the other, the best Audrina. That's why, her father put her in the rocking chair and forced her to rock and become the empty pitcher, so that she could be filled with the other, the best Audrina's gifts.
Who wouldn't be scarred by those events?
These books and this author really means something special to me. If you got through this post, you get a cookie. If you got through this post and are contemplating reading both of these books or just any V.C. Andrews book written by her and not the ghostwriter, then you get my love and admiration plus a whole plateful of whatever cookies you like.
So, tell me what's YOUR Throw Back Thursday? I wanna know. :)
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Radiant Shadows 
Lock and Key 
